Beds as Pictures

Before you jump to the wrong conclusion: no, this won’t be a blog post about Tracy Emin’s early work. In fact it won’t be about any of her work, because the beds are garden beds, but this time I want to think about them as elements of composition. And if that sounds a little bit pompous and posey, I’m sorry, but gardening is ultimately about creating impressions and sensations – and in that respect it’s an Art, with a capital ‘A’. Indeed I’d go further: traditionally artists have worked in two, or if they’re sculptors, three dimensions. But gardeners have also to deal with the added complexities of scent and weather. Time, too, is another dimension that often gets overlooked: part of the genius of men like Capability Brown and Humphrey Repton was the way they could foresee the way their created landscapes would appear in a hundred years’ time…